a chair to the table and sat down. Barrant walked to the door and
locked it before seating himself beside him.

"You can begin as soon as you like," he said.

"I think I had better tell you about my own actions, first of all, on that
night," said Charles, after a brief silence. "It will clear the way for
what follows. I was up here that night--the night of the murder."

"I know that much," was Barrant's cold comment.

"You suspected it--you did not know it," Charles quickly rejoined.

He remained profoundly silent for a moment, as if meditating his words,
and then plunged into his tale.

The account of his own visit to Flint House on the night of the murder he
related with details withheld from Sisily. The visit was the outcome of a
quarrel between father and son over Robert Turold's announcement about his
wife's previous marriage. Charles was shocked by his uncle's decision to
make the story public, and had wandered about the cliffs until dark trying
to decide what to do. Ultimately he returned home and asked his father to
use his influence with his brother to keep the secret in the family. His
father called him a fool for suggesting such a thing, declined to offend
his brother or blast his own prospects by such damned quixotic nonsense.
On this Charles had announced his intention of seeing his uncle and
telling him he would leave England immediately and forever unless the
scandal was kept quiet. That made his father angry, and they quarrelled
violently. Charles cut the quarrel short by flinging out of the house in
the rain, to carry out his intention of interviewing his uncle. He walked
across the moors to Flint House. The front door was open, the downstairs
portion of the house in darkness, and his uncle lying upstairs in his
study--dead.

He hurried over all this as of small importance in the deeper significance
of Thalassa's story. That was to him the great thing--the wonderful
discovery which was to clear Sisily and put everything right. He believed
that the plan which had brought him to Cornwall was working splendidly.
The chance encounter with the detective was really providential--a
speeding up, a saving of valuable time.

The possibility of disbelief did not dawn upon him. He overlooked that his
listener was also his custodian and judge--the suspicious arbiter of a
belated story told by one whose own actions were in the highest degree
suspicious. His overburdened mind forgot these things in the exciteme